Live at Carnegie Hall

In choosing a program for his Carnegie Hall debut recital, in November 2000, Mikhail Pletnev didn't fool around. Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin -- bread-and-butter composers for any pianist -- fill the billing here, but not with mere bagatelles. These are meaty works to sink your teeth into: Busoni's arrangement of Bach's D Minor Chaconne/a>

Overview

In choosing a program for his Carnegie Hall debut recital, in November 2000, Mikhail Pletnev didn't fool around. Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin -- bread-and-butter composers for any pianist -- fill the billing here, but not with mere bagatelles. These are meaty works to sink your teeth into: Busoni's arrangement of Bach's D Minor Chaconne, originally for solo violin; Beethoven's final Piano Sonata in C Minor, Op. 111; and Chopin's four Scherzos. Pletnev, whose career as a concert pianist took off after he won the Tchaikovsky Competition, has been most visible in recent years conducting the Russian National Orchestra, an ensemble he founded in 1990. And evidently his conducting experience has rubbed off on his piano playing: There is an orchestral sensibility to these performances, a timbral and dynamic breadth that seems to strive beyond the piano's limits. And this quality is evident right from the start in Bach's masterful Chaconne, given here with uncommon grandeur. Beethoven's profound, swan-song Sonata receives like treatment, and Chopin's four Scherzos are simply dazzling. An extra disc contains the recital's five encores -- pieces by Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Scarlatti, and Moszkowski, plus Balakirev's tour de force Islamey. With playing of this caliber, ten encores wouldn't have satisfied the Carnegie Hall audience.

Editorial Reviews

Gramophone - Stephen Plaistow

As celebrity recitals go, this must have been an exceptional spectacle. There is an old-time feel about it, as if Horowitz might have been about to walk on stage. Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and a few others are of the party but it is the pianist people have come to hear, and they are expecting to be astonished... Pletnev's athleticism has an allure which is a pleasure in itself. The tumultuous codas of Chopin's Scherzos are meat and drink to him, and in making a dash for home, over hedge and ditch, there is never a doubt about his stamina.